An Empirical Study on Consumer Acceptance of Digital Products and Physical Products in Electronic Markets

Although E-Commerce has marketability as well as usefulness, there are few empirical studies on consumer acceptance using the transaction cost theory. This paper suggests that consumer product acceptance is determined by the difference of transaction cost. And the uncertainty and asset specificity which determine the transaction cost can affect the consumer acceptance of products. In addition, we focus on the different characteristics of digital and physical products in electronic markets. We found that transaction cost, uncertainty, and asset specificity have a significant effect on consumer product acceptance of digital products, while only transaction costs and uncertainty have a significant effect on consumer product acceptance of physical products. In consequence we provide companies to some guidelines of strategic planning for the development of products in electronic markets

On the effect of the East/Japan Sea SST variability on the North Pacific atmospheric circulation in a regional climate model

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2014. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 119 (2014): 418–444, doi:10.1002/2013JD020523.The East/Japan Sea (EJS) is a semi-enclosed marginal sea located in the upstream of the North Pacific storm track, where the leading modes of wintertime interannual variability in sea surface temperature (SST) are characterized by the basin-wide warming-cooling and the northeast-southwest dipole. Processes leading to local and remote atmospheric responses to these SST anomalies are investigated using the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model. The atmosphere in direct contact with anomalous diabatic forcing exhibits a linear and symmetric response with respect to the sign, pattern, and magnitude of SST anomalies, producing increased (decreased) wind speed and precipitation response over warm (cold) SSTs. This local response is due to modulation of both the vertical stability of the marine atmospheric boundary layer and the adjustment of sea level pressure, although the latter provides a better explanation of the quadrature relationship between SST and wind speed. The linearity in the local response suggests the importance of fine-scale EJS SSTs to predictability of the regional weather and climate variability. The remote circulation response, in contrast, is strongly nonlinear. An intraseasonal equivalent barotropic ridge emerges in the Gulf of Alaska as a common remote response independent of EJS SST anomalies. This downstream blocking response is reinforced by the enhanced storm track variability east of Japan via transient eddy vorticity flux convergence. Strong nonlinearity in remote response implies that detailed EJS SST patterns may not be critical to this downstream ridge response. Overall, results demonstrate a remarkably far-reaching impact of the EJS SSTs on the atmospheric circulation.H.S. gratefully acknowledges the support from the Penzance Endowed Fund in support of Assistant Scientists at WHOI. Y.-O.K. acknowledges NSF Climate and Large-Scale Dynamics program (AGS-1035423). H.S. and Y.-O.K. also thank NASA grant (NNX13AM59G)

North Atlantic winter eddy-driven jet and atmospheric blocking variability in the Community Earth System Model version 1 Large Ensemble simulations

© The Author(s), 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Climate Dynamics 51 (2018): 3275–3289, doi:10.1007/s00382-018-4078-6.The atmospheric jet and blocking distributions, especially in the North Atlantic sector, have been challenging features for a climate model to realistically reproduce. This study examines climatological distributions of winter (December–February) daily jet latitude and blocking in the North Atlantic from the 40-member Community Earth System Model version 1 Large Ensemble (CESM1LE) simulations. This analysis aims at examining whether a broad range of internal climate variability encompassed by a large ensemble of simulations results in an improved representation of the jet latitude distributions and blocking days in CESM1LE. In the historical runs (1951–2005), the daily zonal wind at 850 hPa exhibits three distinct preferred latitudes for the eddy-driven jet position as seen in the reanalysis datasets, which represents a significant improvement from the previous version of the same model. However, the meridional separations between the three jet latitudes are much smaller than those in the reanalyses. In particular, the jet rarely migrates to the observed southernmost position around 37°N. This leads to the bias in blocking frequency that is too low over Greenland and too high over the Azores. These features are shown to be remarkably stable across the 40 ensemble members with negligible member-to-member spread. This result implies the range of internal variability of winter jet latitude and blocking frequency within the 55-year segment from each ensemble member is comparable to that represented by the full large ensemble. Comparison with 2046–2100 from the RCP8.5 future projection runs suggests that the daily jet position is projected to maintain the same three preferred latitudes, with a slightly higher frequency of occurrence over the central latitude around 50°N, instead of shifting poleward in the future as documented in some previous studies. In addition, the daily jet speed is projected not to change significantly between 1951–2005 and 2046–2100. On the other hand, the climatological mean jet is projected to become slightly more elongated and stronger on its southern flank, and the blocking frequency over the Azores is projected to decrease.Authors gratefully acknowledge support from the UCAR Significant Opportunities in Atmospheric Research and Science (SOARS) and WHOI Summer Student Fellowship programs. AC and CM were supported in part by the SOARS program, NSF Grant AGS- 1120459. In addition, the supports by the NSF AGS Climate and Largescale Dynamics program and OCE Physical Oceanography program (AGS-1355339) to Y-OK and HS, the DOE BER Regional and Global Climate Modeling program (DE-SC0014433) to Y-OK, and the NSF EaSM3 Sustainability Research Networks program (OCE-1419235) to HS are acknowledged

A Study on the Flexural Behavior of Profiled Composite Beams

An analytical study on the behavior of composite beams, which are composed of cold-formed steel sheeting and normal strength concrete, is described. An analytical method to trace the nonlinear behavior of a composite beam is developed to include the nonlinear material properties of steel sheeting, reinforcing steel bar and concrete. However, since the method is complex and tedious to use, two simple formulas for the nonlinear moment-curvature relation of the composite beam have been proposed. A simple power model, which has been originally used to predict the flexural capacity of the beam to column connections, is proposed as the first formula. The second formula is composed of two experimental set of functions to express separately, the moment-curvature relation in the elastic and the plastic range. Both formulas have been proven to be accurate and useful for the design of profiled composite beams. The load-deflection behavior of the beams has been simulated by the step-by-step numerical integration method and is compared to available test results. The effects of the concrete cube strength and the thickness and strength of the cold-formed steel section on the flexural strength of the composite beam have also been studied

[Benz­yl(2-pyridyl­methyl­idene)amine]­dichloridomercury(II)

The HgII ion in the title complex, [HgCl2(C13H12N2)], adopts a distorted tetra­hedral geometry being coordinated by two Cl anions and by two N atoms of the benz­yl(2-pyridyl­methyl­ene)amine ligand. The Cl—Hg—Cl plane is twisted at 70.1 (1)° from the mean plane of the chelate ring. In the crystal structure, inter­molecular π–π inter­actions [centroid–centroid distance = 3.793 (3) Å] between the aromatic rings link the mol­ecules into zigzag chains extending along [010]

Meridional Gulf Stream shifts can influence wintertime variability in the North Atlantic storm track and Greenland blocking.

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2019. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters 46(3), (2019):1702-1708. doi:10.1029/2018GL081087.After leaving the U.S. East Coast, the northward flowing Gulf Stream (GS) becomes a zonal jet and carries along its frontal characteristics of strong flow and sea surface temperature gradients into the North Atlantic at midlatitudes. The separation location where it leaves the coast is also an anchor point for the wintertime synoptic storm track across North America to continue to develop and head across the ocean. We examine the meridional variability of the separated GS path on interannual to decadal time scales as an agent for similar changes in the storm track and blocking variability at midtroposphere from 1979 to 2012. We find that periods of northerly (southerly) GS path are associated with increased (suppressed) excursions of the synoptic storm track to the northeast over the Labrador Sea and reduced (enhanced) Greenland blocking. In both instances, GS shifts lead those in the midtroposphere by a few months.Our research has been conducted with the support of NSF (AGS‐1355339, OCE‐1419235, and OCE‐1242989), NASA (NNX13AM59G), and NOAA CPO Climate Variability and Predictability Program (NA13OAR4310139) grants to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. We also thank three reviewers for their insightful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. Quarterly estimates of our Gulf Stream Index are available as a data file in the supporting information.2019-07-2

On the predominant nonlinear response of the extratropical atmosphere to meridional shifts of the Gulf Stream

Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Climate 30 (2017): 9679-9702, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0707.1.The North Atlantic atmospheric circulation response to the meridional shifts of the Gulf Stream (GS) path is examined using a large ensemble of high-resolution hemispheric-scale Weather Research and Forecasting Model simulations. The model is forced with a broad range of wintertime sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies derived from a lag regression on a GS index. The primary result of the model experiments, supported in part by an independent analysis of a reanalysis dataset, is that the large-scale quasi-steady North Atlantic circulation response is remarkably nonlinear about the sign and amplitude of the SST anomaly chosen over a wide range of GS shift scenarios. The nonlinear response prevails over the weak linear response and resembles the negative North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the leading intrinsic mode of variability in the model and the observations. Further analysis of the associated dynamics reveals that the nonlinear responses are accompanied by the shift of the North Atlantic eddy-driven jet, which is reinforced, with nearly equal importance, by the high-frequency transient eddy feedback and the low-frequency wave-breaking events. Additional sensitivity simulations confirm that the nonlinearity of the circulation response is a robust feature found over the broad parameter space encompassing not only the varied SST but also the absence/presence of tropical influence, the varying lateral boundary conditions, and the initialization scheme. The result highlights the fundamental importance of the intrinsically nonlinear transient eddy dynamics and the eddy–mean flow interactions in generating the nonlinear downstream response to the meridional shifts in the Gulf Stream.The authors are grateful for the support from NASA (NNX13AM59G) and the NSF (AGS-1355339, OCE-1419235).2018-05-0